ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to moderating two extreme tendencies in the field of ethics and politics: the first associated with unrealistic reliance on chief ministers to regulate ministerial conduct; and the second associated with idealistic over-reactions against this executive-centred model, and the search for alternative models with the capacity to promote moral virtue among public officials. The chapter argues that there are good public policies reasons for targeting vice for example, misuse of public office ahead of virtue, for example, personal moral excellence among public officials. It also aims to put ministerial ethics back in its place: institutionally as an object of parliamentary and not simply executive regulation; and substantively as a project designed to prevent public harm from ministerial misconduct rather than promote personal virtue among ministers and their closest advisers. In the area of ministerial ethics, two worrying tendencies require moderation. The conventional approach to ministerial ethics separates the field into two broad classes of misconduct: official and personal.
